‘I think I’ll come to Oxford with you. After all, I did come home to see you.’
The peace of the street was broken by a posse of skateboarders and rollerbladers skimming fast along the pavement, some six of them.
‘That’s a dangerous sport,’ said Stella, ‘and shouldn’t they be home and in bed?’
‘It’s not that late.’ Coffin was getting out of the car. A couple of the skaters looked bigger and older than the others. There was even one girl. ‘And kids never go to bed these days, hadn’t you noticed?’
He led the way up the garden path, observing that someone did some gardening here, weeding and planting out. ‘There’s a kid here, a daughter, I don’t know if she’ll be here or in bed, as you advise.’
The skateboarders had paused for a rest round the bend in the road. It would soon be dispersal time, because in spite of what the Chief Commander had said, rules were laid down by parents, some of which were obeyed. Skateboarding was an expensive business if you did it right with the best equipment: for this expenditure willing parents were required.
They circled the white van, twice, wordlessly, then sped away.
Coffin rapped on the door while pressing the bell with his other hand. ‘Just making sure,’ he said to Stella.
‘I think she’ll have heard that. Of course, you could shout as well.’
He rang the bell again.
‘She may not be there,’ said Stella, hopefully. She had had enough of this jaunt already.
But presently they both heard the soft slur of footsteps.
‘Wearing slippers,’ said Coffin.
‘Barefoot,’ corrected Stella. Long years on the stage had taught her something about the sound of footsteps.
The door opened and there was Belle Diver, wrapped in a towelling robe, her eyes unfocused.
Drunk or drugs, Coffin thought, possibly both.
‘Sorry,’ Belle said. ‘Sorry, had a bath, took a moggy.’
And she doesn’t mean a cat. Coffin told himself. ‘I’d like to talk; I was told you wanted to talk to me.’
‘Know who you are,’ said Belle, squinting at him as she tried to focus her eyes. She turned to Stella. ‘You too, Miss Pinero. Saw you on the telly the other day.’
She stood aside to let them in. ‘Think the papers are on to me … phone call from a strange voice … asked to speak to Jeff. I said he was out. I think it was a journalist.’ She had difficulty getting the word journalist out.
‘Is there anywhere you can go?’ Coffin asked gently.
‘My mother … already taken my daughter there.’
She had led them into a brightly painted sitting room with red poppies on the walls and poppies on the curtains and chairs. Oddly enough, the room did not look unpleasing, it was cheerful and homely. Not much had been spent, but it had been used with love. Coffin noticed a photograph of a young girl sitting on the grass holding a puppy.
Belle saw him looking. ‘That’s my daughter … the dog’s gone with her.’
Stella saw that something was needed from her. ‘A pretty girl.’ But then her mother was a pretty woman, even flushed and untidy.
‘Thank God it’s been boys he’s been after and not girls,’ said Belle.
‘You don’t know yet.’ Coffin was careful. ‘Can’t be sure.’
‘I’ve known something was wrong for a long while, wondered, worried … well, I know now …’ She took a deep breath, seeming to steady down. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’
She went to the small table in the window, opened a drawer and drew out a couple of photographs. ‘Here.’
Coffin looked at them. Two largish photographs, taken, he judged, with a camera with remote control.
Two men, naked, on a bed, arms around each other. One man had his back to the camera while the other faced it. In the second photograph, the positions were reversed. Coffin had no difficulty recognizing Jeff Diver.
‘Where did you find these?’
‘He left ’em around. In the kitchen. Reckon he wanted me to find them … at least he’s not with one of those lads.’
‘No. Do you know the man?’
After a pause, she shook her head.
‘I’ll have to keep these.’
‘I don’t want them back. And if I do miss them, I daresay I might find others about the place. Could be videos too, for all I know.’
Suddenly, she was crying and shaking. ‘Don’t let her see them.’
Coffin heard Stella move from where she had been standing by the window. She put her arms round the woman. ‘Come and sit down. Belle, I am not here as a witness, just as a woman to help you. I remember you from the days when you worked for Max.’
Belle said through her tears, ‘I enjoyed it, but I gave it up when the child came.’
‘Well, you can go back when you want to. But what you need now is sleep. Those moggies you took need sleeping off. Come on, I’ll help you to bed.’ She started to walk Belle upstairs. Over her shoulder she gave Coffin a long look. ‘Keep quiet and stay where you are.’
With Belle leaning on Stella, the two went upstairs, Belle muzzily uttering words that sounded like ‘thank you’ and ‘ever so kind’.
Coffin heard footsteps above, a short period of silence, then true to her word, Stella was back.
‘Bed’s the best place for her,’ she said. ‘She’ll sleep it off. I think she’d had some vodka as well as the sleeping tablets. I don’t know what she’ll be like in the morning.’
‘As long as she wakes up,’ said Coffin, somewhat alarmed.
‘Oh, she will.’ Stella was experienced in helping drunken and drugged young performers, distraught because the performance had gone badly, off to bed.
‘Thanks, Stella.’
‘I didn’t think you wanted me just to make her a cup of tea.’
‘No, you did what was right.’
‘Someone ought to come and see her in the morning.’
‘Oh, they will,’ Coffin promised. ‘Devlin will have to go over the house, search everything. If he did kill the boys …’
‘What did you make of those photographs? I did see them, of course, I could see what they were as she handed them across.’
‘What they are is obvious, much less obvious is if Jeff Diver had any connection with the boys. But I think he may have known something.’
‘Lock the door carefully. Belle was anxious about that.’
Coffin closed the door and tested it. ‘Best I can do.’ Then he led the way to the car.
In the car, he sat looking up at the house. Tomorrow, the whole place would be gone over; for Belle Diver it would never be the same again. Let her have this night of rest.
‘You did the right thing,’ he said again to Stella.
He looked at her fondly. ‘And why did you come back?’
‘I told you, darling. I wanted to see you. I missed you.’
He drove on, turning into the road that led home. ‘Stella, you are an actress, but always remember, I am a detective.’
‘Well, the truth is, I wanted to see what my old nose looked like in my own environment before I had it altered. Check, you know. You lose perspective away from home.’
Thoughtfully, Coffin said: ‘That’s a better excuse than the first one, I give you that, my love. But still not quite good enough.’
7
In the morning, while Stella took the dog for a walk, Coffin had a talk with the investigating team, Inspector Devlin, Sergeant Tittleton, and DC Amanda Harden, who was looking as attractive, well turned out and well bred as her name suggested. A woman Chief Commander in the making, Coffin told himself, and saw that Paddy Devlin felt the same. Was there a hint of rivalry brewing there?
Chief Superintendent Archie Young joined them, as one having a watching brief.
Coffin nodded at Inspector Devlin. ‘Go ahead.’ He knew he could get to Oxford in just over an hour, even if Stella and Augustus insisted on joining him.
‘First of all, there have been no sighti
ngs so far of Jeff Diver. We do not know where he is. I had another session with his wife earlier today.’ Devlin paused. It had been very early and Belle Diver had come to the door in her dressing gown. Sober and controlled, though. ‘She says she has no idea where he is and I believe her. We are looking, of course.’
‘He’ll turn up in the end.’
‘Dead or alive … Sounded like a suicide note to me …’
‘He could be in the river,’ said Archie Young.
‘One of my suspects was there,’ said Devlin. ‘Joe Partoni, drowned. I am still thinking of him as the killer … Big Jim Matherson, from the Royal Infirmary, says suicide is almost certain. Partoni could just have done the killings but it depends on the estimate of the deaths of the boys. When they died. All a bit iffy at the moment.’
‘Let’s rule him out for the time being, unless something turns up that ties him in.’
‘One problem is resolved: the boys’ clothes. You remember the Chinner lad was wearing clothes not his own, this was the case with all four. It seemed likely’ – Devlin took a deep breath – ‘all the boys had been stripped and then dressed later, when dead, in any pair of jeans and shirt that came to hand. Either the killer didn’t know or more likely didn’t care which clothes the body got. After forensics had finished with them, and they were quick and thorough, sir, we asked the parents to view them and all could identify a couple of garments. There seem to be a couple of sweaters and a shirt that no one owns to.’
‘Does that mean another dead boy we don’t know about?’ asked Coffin.
Paddy Devlin shrugged. ‘I hope not. And I don’t think so. There is always a problem left unanswered. The killer provided himself with spare clothes, no doubt.’
‘Might be a boy that got away,’ said Sergeant Tittleton.
Devlin shrugged again. ‘Nothing has been reported.’
‘Not always reported.’ This was Archie Young’s sharp contribution to the discussion. ‘We know that.’
‘True, sir.’ Devlin turned towards him. ‘I am bearing it in mind.’
‘Seems odd,’ said DC Harden, ‘that the boys should be dressed when dead.’
Devlin said that there was no accounting for everything that a bloody pervert would do.
‘Forensics any good on where the clothes had been kept … they had to have been stored somewhere?’ Coffin asked.
‘Somewhere very clean was all they offered, hardly any traces. They think they might have been washed, sir, just given a bit of a tumble dry as well.’
‘Nearly everyone has a washing machine.’
‘It’s something for us to think about further, sir. Of course, there was blood on the Chinner lad’s clothes.’ She was careful not to look at Archie Young. ‘His clothes had not been washed. Might not have been convenient.’
Nasty housekeeping evoked here, thought Coffin.
‘And the blood?’
‘Some from the boy himself, some from one other person. I am guessing the other set of bloody traces was from the killer.’
‘And the leg? Anything there?’
‘Nothing, I am afraid. The truth is, I don’t know where to look. I made investigations at the hospitals, thought it might be a medical specimen, but no one admits to losing it.’
‘Would they admit?’
‘I think the days of medical students playing that sort of joke are over,’ said Paddy Devlin. ‘If they ever existed. Everyone is so serious now.’
‘Think urban foxes,’ said Coffin, remembering what had been said about the limbs of the dead Harry Seton.
He looked around him: he had silenced the room.
In the car, some time later, there was silence too, even though Stella was sitting beside him and Gus was lolling on the back window ledge enjoying the view. Both were experienced, quiet travellers and although both had a tendency to say that they simply must get out of the car for a minute – the one to admire the view, and the other for more practical doggy purposes – today both sat still.
As he drove, Coffin ran through a list of names: Tim Kelso he had seen and reserved judgement on; he was off to Wessex to see Peter Chard (who did not, as yet, know it) and Margaret Grayle, who did; ahead of him in the days to come were interviews with Joe Weir in Newcastle, and Felicity Fox in Cambridge. There was also Susy Miller who ‘floated around’, she would be obliged to float his way. All of these were almost certainly already alerted and waiting for him. Harry Seton passed their way, now it was Coffin’s turn.
Down Headington Hill, over Magdalen Bridge, and through the High.
If these spires are dreaming, thought Coffin, they must find their sleep disturbed by the roar of traffic and the smell of diesel. A quiet university set now in an industrial belt, Oxford had nothing on Warwick, both were inheritors of the motor car, one in Cowley and the other in Coventry.
‘We have just passed the park-and-drive car park,’ said Coffin, ‘but I have made arrangements to put the car in the official police car park just beyond Christ Church, then I will walk to my appointment. You and Augustus can amuse yourselves in the city. I don’t think the colleges let dogs in.’
‘You seem to know your way around,’ said Stella, getting out of the car with Augustus in her arms.
‘I had a case here once, a long while ago, but I have never forgotten it.’
‘I was in a Shakespeare at the old Playhouse in Beaumont Street,’ said Stella. ‘Loved it. I had lodgings up the Iffley Road and I used to go for breakfast at Ma Brown’s in the market … I expect that’s gone, it was a long time ago.’
‘Still be somewhere to eat in the market, I expect. I don’t know about Gus, though.’
‘Oh, the two of us will manage. We might go to look up old friends.’
‘Have you got any?’ said Coffin in surprise.
‘Oh, I expect so, they were all students in those days, but I should think they will be fellows or even heads of colleges now. You may have to come looking for me.’
‘You had better tell me which colleges to try first.’
‘Oh, I will leave a message on your mobile … you have got it with you?’
‘Yes.’ He was not sure how to handle Stella when she was in this mood. ‘If I don’t hear I will look for you in the University Parks on one of those benches near the gate.’
Stella considered. Or we could come down to the Station Hotel and sit while you interview your lady.’
‘I would rather you did not.’
‘Only teasing,’ she said coolly.
The Station Hotel was within walking distance and Coffin wanted the walk. He needed to think, to reorient his mind away from the murders in the Second City to finding out who was the traitor for pay in the pharmaceutical unit. Another murder there too, sitting like a stone at the back of his mind: Harry Seton had been killed.
The lounge of the hotel was empty except for an old man sitting in one corner drinking sherry and reading The Times. Coffin ordered a drink for himself while he waited.
‘I am not doing very well with this pharmaceutical business,’ he told himself. ‘Nothing as yet is clear. Well, let’s see how it goes today.’
He was looking at the door as a tall, curly-haired woman in a very short, dark-blue skirt and a bright tweed jacket walked in. Coffin had lived with Stella long enough to know expensive clothes when he saw them. Could Grayle afford such clothes? And if so, then how? In his mind, suspicions were totting up. If a woman liked couture clothes enough, she would want to earn them, somehow.
She came straight up to him and held out her hand. ‘Margaret Grayle … I said I would recognize you.’ She looked at him appraisingly. ‘You haven’t changed all that much.’
‘No?’
‘Older, of course, but so am I. You have quite a distinctive appearance, you know. I saw you on television once doing an interview and that refreshed my memory, but I remember you from a time you had a case in Oxford … I was a schoolkid. I used to think I would like you, or someone like you, to be my uncle.’
&
nbsp; ‘Great-uncle now, I should think.’
‘No, it doesn’t work like that … as I get older, you get younger, the gap lessens.’
Coffin, who was not often silenced, was silenced now. He was wondering exactly what was on offer and why. He began to have some idea why Stella had been firm on coming to Oxford with him. Did she have precognition or some such?
‘You wanted to see me?’
‘I heard you were looking for me. I know why you are here and what you are looking for. No secrets here, really.’
Except one big one, Coffin thought: Who is the secret traitor in the machine and why was Harry Seton killed? Did he know who the betrayer was and why was it so dangerous?
Come to think of it, that was more than one question.
No, just one question: Why was Harry Seton killed?
‘Is that what you had to say? If so, I have come a long way to learn nothing.’ He stood up. ‘Let me get you a drink while you think out what you really want to say. While you are doing that, you might try to remember if the name Pennyfeather means anything … What would you like to drink?’
‘Vodka and tonic, please. And no, Pennyfeather is not known to me.’
When he returned with the drink, she was smiling. ‘They said you were clever and you are. Well, I’ll be honest.’
‘It would be wiser.’
‘I suppose I wanted to warn you.’
Coffin was silent. He had been warned before, several times, in fact, and never been stopped from doing what seemed the thing to do. Not necessarily the right thing, often he had doubts about that, but what seemed his destiny at the time.
‘You know what happened to Harry Seton, we all know.’
‘Everyone knows.’ Coffin did not believe his destiny was to be killed on the job. Margaret Grayle was easily the best suspect so far. Warning him off, indeed … he wondered who had put her up to it. ‘Are you saying it might happen to me?’
‘Harry is dead. There has to be a connection with what he was doing here … Asking questions.’
A Grave Coffin Page 12
